Thursday, July 19, 2007

Pragmatastic Hedonerrificness

I’d be sad if I was dead tomorrow.-Trent Reznor
It’s funny how many people will tell you that they’re happy just so they don’t jinx their chances of winning the lottery; it’s sad how many of those same people are relying on the lottery for their retirement.

I’m not going to pretend that I’m not a lucky fuck – my girlfriend’s an accountant, so my headspace is mostly free of the rattling nuts and bolts of reality that come from taking life seriously. If left to myself, I would be lying under some wet cardboard in a park...but I’d still be seeing what kind of shapes the clouds were making. I mean, I wouldn’t be dead.

This is my point: yes, I have some pretty severe delusions of grandeur punching at my frontal lobes, but these phantoms of expected wealth don’t include an inheritance, or finding a box of money, or marrying rich – I justassume that I’ll eventually be rich. However, just like I spend my days assuming that others will use their turn-signals, or hold the elevator, or pick up their dogs’ shit, it doesn’t ruin my life when they don’t.

I’m not relying on anything to MAKE me happy; I’m good.

Hell, according to this fifteen-year-old report, maybe you’re better off NOT being "good"; glee is, apparently, a psychological problem that goes by the moniker Major Affective Disorder, Pleasant Type.

(Any chance it’s coincidental that MAD is the acronym for this affliction?)

Happiness is "statistically abnormal, consists of a discrete cluster of symptoms, is associated with a range of cognitive abnormalities, and probably reflects the abnormal functioning of the central nervous system".